By Jeff Brandes
“I was in prison and you came to me.” – Matthew 25:36
The eighth change in the US constitution prohibits cruel and unusual punishment. You would think that this would regulate the question of whether a person should endure a heat of 100 degrees in a closed dormitory without air conditioning, without air flow and without escape. But in Florida, the state argues that this type of heat does not increase to the degree of cruelty. It is only part of the sentence.
This was the argument of the prosecutors who defended themselves at the Dade Correctional institution, a Miami-Dade prison, in which more than 1,500 men-many older or medically fragile ones are fragile. A federal action describes relentless heat, broken fans and failed ventilation systems. Since 2021, at least four men have died in this one facility on heat -related causes. The judge let the case continue.
The defense of the state? The suffering is not cruel enough to be unconstitutional.
This is not just legal hair. It is a moral collapse.
I was in this prison. I stood in these dormitories in the middle of summer. One summer when I walked with Senator Jason Pizzo prisons, I remember the sweat that held on to our skin when the air stood still. Inside was hotter than outside. The showers felt like steam chambers. Occupants that are shuffled past with hikers and sticks. In another prison, the kitchen had cockroaches in waves. What shocked me the most was not how bad the conditions – it was how routine they were.
In 2023, the state commissioned a report by KPMG to assess the prison system in Florida. The results were damn. Over a third of the correction institutions in Florida were in the “critical” or “bad” state. The air conditioning was completely missing more than 500 residential units – about one fifth nationwide. The report required immediate repairs of 2.2 billion US dollars, including $ 582 million only for HLK systems.
What happened afterwards?
Nothing.
No financing. No emergency event. No visits on site from the highest office of the state. Only silence.
In the hope of measures, the Florida Policy Project created a brief summary of the appropriate recommendations from the KPMG report. I write today to urge the legislators to review this report and take measures. ((See the short report here.))
GOV. Ron Desantis has been in office for over six years. During this time he visited Ukraine, the southern border and the headquarters almost every cultural war. He didn't do a single Florida State prison on tour. He is not alone. Most legislators don't have it either. It is not a blind spot out of malice, but out of convenience. Because it is easier to ignore a system that is from vision – easier if you can rationalize it as “hard for crimes”.
If you never enter the building, you never smell the mildew, never feel the 102-degree air that presses against your skin, and never look into the eyes of someone whose sentence has become slow dehydration.
However, this negligence is not included in prison walls. Would you edit a 12-hour layer in a concrete box without air flow and without relief? Our refusal to fix the conditions in our prisons directly promotes a personnel crisis.
It is not only inhumane – it is not sustainable.
And here it gets the darkest: the warmth is not a failure of politics. It is the guideline. When the state shrugs in clever cells, insect infestation and aging men collapses and does nothing, he sends a message – that deserves it.
This is not justice. This is cruelty through design.
Matthew 25 does not ask if the detained are likeable. It does not ask if they are innocent. It asks if we have appeared. Whether we were ready to see. Whether we recognized their humanity in the middle of our indifference.
Florida's prisons work exactly as our neglect makes it possible for you. The heat is not only atmospheric. It is institutional. And every day we delay when we delay it, we make a quiet but deadly choice.
The next time someone says that the punishment is not cruel enough, ask yourself: How hot does it have to be?
Since the legislator is negotiating the budget this week, the leadership must ask:
Will we finally invest in dignity and security – or do you continue to do our punishment for us?
Jeff Brandes, a Senator of the Republican state from 2010 to 2022, is the founder and president of the Florida Policy Project.
